November 8 in German History

Death of Duns Scotus (original name: Johannes) in Cologne, Germany (born in Scotland). Duns Scotus was a Franciscan who was educated in England and had taught at the University of Paris prior to his final academic appointment at Cologne in 1307. He had become a very controversial scholar through one of his conclusions, that Mary had been born without sin (considered heresy by many). By the 16th Century Scotus was held in an esteem rivaling that of Thomas Aquinas.

November 8, 1773

Death of Friedrich Freiherr von Seydlitz in Kalkar, Germany. Von Seydlitz was the commander who built the Prussian cavalry of Friedrich II into the best in Europe.

November 8, 1848

Birth of Gottlob Frege in Wismar, Germany. Frege studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and philosophy at the University of Göttingen. He later became a professor of mathematics at the University of Jena. Thinking on the boundary between philosophy and mathematics, Frege developed the beginnings of modern mathematical logic. His work remained without interest or understanding for many years until taken up by Bertrand Russell (1902). Some of his definitions (e.g., of the predecessor relation and of the concept of natural number) and methods (e.g., for deriving the axioms of number theory) constituted a significant advance.

November 8, 1865

Friedrich Wilhelm, the elector of Brandenburg (Holy Roman Empire) grants asylum to all Huguenots expelled from France by Louis XIV.

November 8, 1884

Birth of Hermann Rorschach in Zürich, Switzerland. The developer of the “Rorschach Test”, he earned his M.D. from the University of Zürich. He was a practicing psychologist in Zürich.

November 8, 1895

Wilhelm Röntgen announced the discovery of X-rays. He then went on to invent a machine which could take X-ray pictures. The first objects he X-rayed were the interiors of some metal objects and then the bones of his wife’s hand. Röntgen was a professor at the University of Würzburg.